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Hound: February Sees Positives and Negatives in the Job Market

In February, employment in transportation and warehousing continued to trend down, construction employment fell by 64,000 in February, about the average monthly job loss over the last 6 months. A few sectors remained unchanged, such manufacturing and retail trade (which has a sizeable increase in January).

 

Pasadena, CA -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/24/2010 -- Virtually every field has suffered massive job losses within the last several years. The United States Bureau of Statistics has reported several key figures among the unemployed in the month of February.

In February, employment in transportation and warehousing continued to trend down, construction employment fell by 64,000 in February, about the average monthly job loss over the last 6 months. A few sectors remained unchanged, such manufacturing and retail trade (which has a sizeable increase in January). Health care employment continued to trend upward in February making it one of the largest job sectors in the country today. Over the month of February, job increases in building material and garden supply stores, 7,000, and in department stores, 6,000, but were negated by decreases in food and beverage stores, 9,000 over the same time period. Building and gardening supply stores should see improvement when climate changes take affect across the entire country.

With essentially every job sector reporting less the stellar number, in February, temporary help services added 48,000 jobs (reaching a low point in September 2009) temporary helped services employment rising to an additional 284,000. Employment in the federal government rose also with the hiring of 15,000 temporary workers for Census 2010 (which gives those who need an extra income or any income at all the opportunity to earn for a brief period). With good news comes the bad news. This was partially neutralized by a decline in U.S. Postal Service employment because of closed branches.

There were also 1.2 million “discouraged workers (discouraged workers are persons not currently looking for work because they believe no jobs are available”) in February, up by 473,000 from a year previously.

With this being said, Hound posts over 100,000 per week and has more than 600,000 jobs available daily in many different fields. The reason Hound is so successful is because Hound “sniffs” out jobs that are not advertised by the main stream job search websites.

With the low job rates in February (March and April are expected to see the same), this does not bode well for those youth seeking employment during the summer months. When 16-24 year olds typically need jobs the most, during the summer, there are frightening statistics to show that in the most critical times jobs are not available as well. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor from April to July 2009, the number of employed youth 16-24 years old increased by 1.6 million to 19.3 million.

Those numbers look good on the surface but the percentage of young people who were employed in July was 51.4%, making it the lowest July rate on record for the series since 1948. In July 2009, 4.4 million youth were unemployed, which is 1 million more then in July 2008. For that young job seeker looking for work in the coming months, it might be very difficult.

With summer only a couple months away, Hound has more then 10,000 part-time positions available with retail leading the way with more than 5,000 retail jobs available. Hound searches an endless amount of job search sites to ensure that the job seeker has the best possibility of finding employment in every job sector there is. There are more than 160,000 healthcare positions available, more than 95,000 manager jobs, more than 65,000 nursing jobs and more than 55,000 information technology jobs available. It is never too early to begin looking for a summer position.